The Prison Yard Blues

Here’s how you realign the world with one big move. Imagine you’re a prisoner, walking out onto the prison yard for the first time. Everywhere you look, there are big, powerfully built bad guys of every kind. The one thing they all share is a gift for violence, which is how they maintain control. They’re broken down into tribes; over there is The Nation of Islam and other Black Nationalists. In that direction is the skinheads, Nazis and White supremacists. Then you have the Spanish gangs, wearing tats and teardrops indicating their efficiency at fatally dispensing with their enemies. The rest of the population is trying just to survive. Staying in the shadows as much as possible. Trying not to be seen.

In a situation like this, you have a few choices, join one of the gangs, or stay out of sight. If you’re a young Mike Tyson, let’s say, your choices are endless. You don’t need a gang. Because you are a gang. So you walk out into the yard on your first day, you find the biggest, baddest son-of-a-bitch in the place, walk up to him with a menacing calm, and without hesitation you launch a punch with the worst intentions, sending him into a state of unconsciousness like a little kid taking a beating from his daddy. In that one moment, this inner world of thugs, thieves, and killers realigns.

​That is exactly what president Trump did when he launched a rocket on Syria. There were no unintended casualties, but a powerful message was sent, nonetheless. This was also true of the massive bomb dropped on ISIS, killing more than 90 of their leaders.

President Obama couldn’t do this because he viewed America as the bully that needed taking down a notch or two, leaving him with few choices but to draw a line in the sand—and when the line was crossed, hold his breath and wait for congress to act—knowing that they wouldn’t.

Maybe a speech would do it. That was his preferred M.O... In that sense, Barrack Obama was another Neville Chamberlain, hoping against hope that Hitler, a man whose ideas did not coincide with reality, could be rationalized with.

Let me be clear, I have no faith that president Trump has solved the problem once and for all. But that isn’t really possible anyway.

There will always be bad guys. Just as there will always be hard choices, with very imperfect men and women to make them. Every once in a while, though, you’ve got to walk that yard and take down the bad guy—and make a show of it.

Barrack Obama never really understood this, because he was an academic with precious little real world experience. I don’t say that as a slight, just as a fact. His followers may not be able to acknowledge this, but the rest us, including the rest of the world, certainly do.